


Shadow of Sleep

by JaxtonsTrash



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Ginko is the Local Cryptid, Modern AU, no beta we die like idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24692806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaxtonsTrash/pseuds/JaxtonsTrash
Summary: There’s a mysterious man who walks the streets at night, the rumours say. He speaks little, listens softly, and pulls the wounds from your very heart. He’s a healer, the rumours say, not a danger to be feared. His hands are like mercy, kind and gentle but firm where the need fall. His movements are like shadows, sure and quiet and comforting to those who understand true darkness. He may not even be a man, some say, but perhaps the spirit of a god.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	Shadow of Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Magnagracea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnagracea/gifts).



> oh hello this is a very short drabble I wrote on a Friday night. Pls enjoy this modern AU!
> 
> CW for unreality, a little bit

  
  


There’s a mysterious man who walks the streets at night, the rumors say. He speaks little, listens softly, and pulls the wounds from your very heart. He’s a healer, the rumours say, not a danger to be feared. His hands are like mercy, kind and gentle but firm where the need fall. His movements are like shadows, sure and quiet and comforting to those who understand true darkness. He may not even be a man, some say, but perhaps the spirit of a god.

Adashino has never met him, nor has he so much as wanted to. He holds no darkness in his heart, no illness in his soul-- at least none that would merit calling such a person to his life. He has no reason to know this man, the one the whispers speak of, nor understand him in the slightest. And yet Adashino knows, if he walks long enough and down the narrowest of streets, exactly what he would find there. There has never been any doubt in his mind as to what the rumours say, none whatsoever. There are things lurking in the dark, and there is the man who steps in their shadows.

Some speak of this strange man as a danger, and some speak of him as charity. Shadows bend where he walks, the moon wavers, sometimes even the streets grow deafening with an aetherial, melodic hum in his aura. A healer, they whisper, but if you meet him on the wrong night it could very well be your last. There is an ever-growing shadow that crawls in his wake, some looming horror that mirrors his every move. He’s there, and then he’s not. You blink, and the man is gone.

It seems the entire city knows this shadow, and yet forgets at once. It’s a memory stolen away, its reflection visible like a mirage ever-fleeing in the distance. He’s like half a memory, and named for something some murmur may bring it back: _Ginkgo._ And yet even with a name, he seems no closer to reality than some cruel dream the city invented.

Having grown away from this place, Adashino only finds himself drawn to these things-- perhaps foolishly. His life had always been slow, quiet, nurtured by the countryside and the ocean and the knowledge that his world was a comfort. The worst rumors were those of a neighbour stealing eggplant from another’s garden, perhaps even some under-handed gambling. But a shadow that walked like a man? Nothing of the sort.

And so Adashino finds himself staying out late, in this city that never sleeps, wandering the streets until the sun peeks over rooftops.

He sees stores open and close, he sees couples bicker and make up, he sees cats and birds and rodents wandering the streets alongside him tracing steps worn into the concrete by thousands of feet. Once, he swears he sees a motorcyclist with no head carving through traffic in the early dawn, but when he blinks the figure is gone.

And yet none of these are the things he seeks.

He never loses his wonder, but as weeks become months and turn into years, Adashino falls into the rhythm of the city and learns its heartbeat the way he he once knew the song of the sea and the new becomes the familiar. Nights writing papers, afternoons spent in exam halls and early mornings trailing through hospital halls teach him many things, but none of them settle the unease that resides in his heart-- they only mute it. There’s a shadow between his ribs, carved in the shape of a mystery he could almost forget, but refuses to let go of entirely. There’s an ache of a hope, clinging to his bones.

And so it is strange, in all consideration, the way it happens. 

It’s been 30 hours on the floor, maybe more, and Adashino can’t remember what day it is. He can’t remember the last time he had a shower, or the last time he slept properly. It couldn’t have been the previous night, nor the night before… his sleep had been disappearing from him day by day, hour by hour, eaten away by the demands of proving his worth. There had been a time, perhaps, when he hadn’t cared for such a thing, but… cities moved fast, hospitals faster, and no one cared for the letters at the end of your name if you couldn’t hold your own when you were called. 

It was an entirely different world, the one he'd moved into, and at some point the magic had been replaced by a constant drone, one he had once sworn he'd never bow to. 

Adashino misses the coast, desperately and fervently, but he misses sleep more than anything at all. He could distantly remember the comfort of the waves in his ears as he was lulled to dreams; some nights he imagined it so deeply it almost drowned out the sounds of the city. Not enough to comfort his heart, but enough to find glimpses of sleep when he needed it most. He wonders if that strange man would have a cure for the ache in his heart, or if the rumors of the city are nothing but that: rumors. 

He wonders as well if he should go home after this, after the years go by again and he’s free to do as he pleases. If his village would take him back proudly, or if they’d see the lines under his eyes and turn him away. If tasting salt on his tongue and feeling clean wind against his skin could cure the ache of loneliness, of this tiredness that sleep had not rid him of. If it could free him of the innocence and naivety that time and overwork had stolen away.

It’s far too long until Adashino realises he’s lost. He hasn’t been lost in years, not in this place. Not when the buildings are like the lines in his palm, traced over and over again in both boredom and curiosity. He knows each vein, each turn, he could take a road in his sleep and know where he’d wake. But as he looks around, nothing is familiar any more-- not the lights, the shadows, the sounds. He stops where he stands, hands deep in the pockets of his white coat, blinking up at stars he doesn’t seem to know. He hasn’t seen stars in years.

“Are you lost?”

Adashino pulls his tired eyes down from the sky and blinks blearily. There’s a man standing in front of him, a man with hair so white it rivals fresh snow. _He’s not from here_ , Adashino thinks, then realises immediately how wrong that thought is. There was something about his silhouette that felt more _from_ this place than anything else around him. This man was not merely from _here_. He felt as though he could belong anywhere at all.

The man pulls a cigarette out from between his teeth, tapping it so the loose tobacco falls into ash. “You’re lost.”

Adashino shakes his head. He doesn’t know why he shakes his head; the man is right. “Can I help you?” He asks.

The stranger shrugs. His hair reflects the moonlight; terrible alabaster. “I ought to ask you the same.”

Adashino rubs one of his eyes. “I live just over… this way…” he starts, and then realises he doesn’t know where he’s standing. There are trees around him where buildings once were, stretching up towards the starry sky. Where lamps had been sentinel there is nothing but foliage, green and dark and curling across his vision. He feels like he's floating, and sees a soft golden path far down below his feet. It moves like a river, twisting and carrying a current that swirls against the darkness.

The white-haired stranger takes a step towards him; Adashino catalogues how plain he is dressed, and yet how striking the man himself is. Plain khakis, a white shirt, and a long, brown coat trailing past his knees-- but his stare is so bright, a green eye returning Adashino’s interest.

“How long have you been walking?” The stranger asks.

Adashino looks up, and then laughs to himself, finding the question odd. He doesn’t remember. “Hours.” He doesn’t know why he answers; he ought to walk away.

“Do you remember where you were before you were here?”

Adashino closes his eyes. “The hospital,” he says, but he’s not sure that’s right. He does remember being in the hospital, but when he tries to think about having left, he’s not sure he had.

“I see,” the stranger answers. He takes a deep breath in, holding the cigarette smoke behind his teeth. "It took me a while to find you; admittedly, I was hoping you'd know more than this."

Adashino frowns-- _more than what?_ Surely he must be walking in some kind of dream. Adashino wonders why he’s talking to this man, why he’s standing in this strange place. And yet he can’t bring himself to question any of it; all he can do is stare at the stranger, at his white hair and his strikingly green eye, and say nothing of it. He wonders what would happen if he were to walk away-- would he fall into that river of moving light beneath his feet? Or would he fade off into the darkness, lost in the night?

“Who are you?”

The stranger smiles. “A traveller.” He reaches into the pocket of his long coat and pulls out something small: a pin, perhaps the size of a 28-gauge needle. Adashino squints at it, feeling his knees wobble beneath him.

“When was the last time you slept through the night?”

Adashino stares at the needle, held so gingerly between pale fingers, and swallows. The trees around him sway in some invisible breeze he can’t feel. He thinks about the last time he set his head down against a pillow, and thinks maybe that sleep had swallowed him last only when he had been by the ocean. 

“Was it the solstice, maybe?”

Adashino can’t answer him; his question seems neither right nor wrong. He thinks of the sound of the fan in his room, of the way it's a white noise like the tide but so much more mechanical. He thinks about how it was supposed to help him sleep, and yet it was just another object he owned in the end.

The stranger steps closer; his shoes make no sound as he walks . “ _Manatsu no netsu,_ ” the stranger articulates, and Adashino feels a palm against his forehead. It’s cool, but warm at the same time, and he leans into the touch. Maybe he _was_ feverish. “How haven’t you noticed? It's been weeks.”

Adashino laughs, feeling fingers curl into his hair. “Noticed what?”

“ _Supuritto-yume_ ,” the man answers. It means nothing to Adashino, and yet the words seem to hold everything as well. This man speaks them as though they are the most important words in the world. 

Adashino closes his eyes, allows the stranger’s fingers to continue carding through his hair. “I live my life in cups of coffee," he sighs. "Fear of failure. More coffee. I have no time to notice things like that.” As the city had swallowed him, days had become measured in clipboards and charts, in sore feet and cold meals he'd forgotten about. How long had it been since he'd slept well? For some reason this stranger's question lingered with him. He thought of the summer, of the heat of the day and the humidity of the evening. When had summer passed by? How long had it been since? Every day had felt the same to him for an immeasurable time.

“You’d like to rest, though, right?” The stranger asks, breaking Adashino's silence.

Adashino nods into his hand. He doesn’t know why he allows this dialogue to continue. “Just one night could be nice.” He wants many things, but not all could be offered by rest. He thinks of the sea.

“You could ask for so much more, you know,” the stranger hums, his voice low. Adashino feels something sharp-- _the needle--_ jab the back of his neck, and his eyes snap open.

The world thins around him, spinning into mist like the dream it seemed it had been. Trees dissolve around him, the stars blinking out overhead. Adashino feels heavy, so terribly heavy, his legs buckling under his own weight-- and yet he feels like he's floating upwards, the river of light below retreating. He sees the stranger, his white hair, his long coat. An emblem, sewn on the back: a single leaf, broad and wide and shaped like a fan, with a thin stem.

_Ginkgo._

Sleep embraces him; he feels heavy and light at the same time.

When Adashino wakes, it’s with a hand on his shoulder that he doesn’t recall. He blinks, blinding lights overhead harsh in his eyes. He sits, unsteady, keeling forward. There’s a burning in the back of his neck, but the rest of his body feels steady, clear, whole. 

“Adashino, you’re awake!”

He looks around the room, cataloguing the worried faces that surround him. He hears a faint and steady beep off to his left, hears more beeps off to his right, and realises he’s sitting in a hospital bed. 

He looks down at his lap and feels a grin spread across his face. He knows he’s been asleep for days; he knows he passed out in the middle of the ER, collapsing into a paramed and the bed they’d been moving after 30 hours on his feet, many more without rest. He knows he’d been walking through a dream for days, motions made but not felt. Perhaps longer still he’d been doing it, thinking that feeling nothing at all was a normal thing to feel.

He thinks of the coast, of his home, of the trails he used to walk as a child. The moss beneath his feet, dirt through his toes, sand against his hands as he moulded it. He thinks of the lights he used to chase at night, of the joy in his heart as he looked up at the moon and considered chasing after it. 

He wonders when he forgot that joy and had substituted it with a dream that wasn’t even his own. Was it when the stars had gone out overhead, replaced by corporate lights? When routine had eaten away at his wonder, his curiosity, when papers had gnawed at his resolve more than he could take?

Adashino turns his expression to the room around him, at the faces he should know and remember and yet doesn’t seem to be able to catalogue. He thinks only of a single face, beneath white hair. He thinks of a bright green eye, of a crooked smile and the soft, soothing comfort of a hum in his ear. 

_You could ask for so much more, you know._

Adashino smiles and thinks that perhaps, if given a moment, he just might. 

**Author's Note:**

> ok so I get Ginko is spelt different than Ginkgo but I do find it funny . Ginkgo Biloba (the plant) has been used to treat memory issues and cognitive function for a very long time...
> 
> also lol I"m very sleep bedtime for me  
> ([ message me on tungle.hell with prompts ](http://jaxtonstrash.tumblr.com)if u want me to write u something it's fun to do shorter things)


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